A post-Roberto Carlos VIP Dinner Night cigarette with Savvas Tzionis

My attempt to get Roberto Carlos to attend South of the Border's
exclusive dinner event failed to achieve its goal.

Last week some of you may have noticed that South Melbourne Hellas were involved in all sorts of Roberto Carlos fluffery, including a gala ball event at the casino. Since I was not interested in paying whatever the bloated cost was of attending the gala event, and also because I was trying to ignore the whole Roberto Carlos thing as much as possible, it appeared unlikely that there would be anyone who would be able to relay some thoughts on the evening's affairs. Luckily for South of the Border and its audience, regular comment leaver and occasional contributor Savvas Tzionis not only found himself at this event, but he was also gracious enough to agree to my request for a rundown of affairs.

From a personal point of view, reading this piece reminded me of a few things. For example, the involvement of Mark Bosnich reminded me of this and also this, while the appearance of Paul Wade reminded me of this (see the comments section in particular), and made me regret once more my not having not gotten around to writing up a piece on Paul Wade's mid 1990s autobiography, which could have led to several interesting observations. That's what happens when you leave something on the backburner for seven or eight years though. So it goes. Over to Savvas.


A post-Roberto Carlos VIP Dinner cigarette with Savvas Tzionis
When you continue to advertise your renewed passion for South Melbourne, be prepared to be called on it. I probably wasn't, and x amount of dollars later, I was obligated to attend the Roberto Carlos inspired gala event at Crown Palladium, at the invitation of a friend of mine (let's call him LH) from the GOCMV (Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria). I was initially hesitant simply because I have some doubts about the push for an A League spot. But not being a complete naysayer, I was curious. Plus, I got a discounted ticket.

The attendance was very good, except for three or four empty tables near ours, but I struggled to spot any regular NPL attendees except a couple in the smokers room (and as I will explain, it's STILL the place to be, where you can find out interesting tidbits). The highlights of the previous week's amazing FFA Cup game against Dandenong City were shown and I dare say if the attendees included a few more actual supporters, there would have been more than polite applause at the climax with the Rocky music.

I happened to be adjacent to the table that had Michael Eager, Marcus Schroen, and Jesse Daley. Leigh Minopoulos was on another table for some reason (did he bring his family or something?). Schroen (mis)informed me that the Avondale game was bring played that Sunday. My table was full of LH's friends. Not one word was spoken about South, except about the redeveloped ground, which instantly morphed into a discussion about Eddie McGuire and AFL. And then My Big Fat Greek Wedding somehow popped up! Nearly all appeared to be private school alumni; is that a line of demarcation in relation to supporting South? What percentage of our supporters attended or send their kids to private schools?

Sponsor and menu details from the Roberto Carlos VIP dinner.
Click on the image to enlarge.

The food was very nice, but there was no alternative servings like at a wedding. And while the dessert was nice, it was heavy on the chocolate, which meant I had no urge to eat the additional chocolates that were served with tea and coffee. As for the night itself, it proceeded smoothly. Not that anything can really go wrong when it's generally a talk-fest, but hats off to the organisers. I particularly liked the obligatory Brazilian percussionists. It brought back memories of the 2002 World Cup (a forgotten lost opportunity for Australian Soccer where the Socceroos could have been playing prime time football).

The only lull was while they did a half hour Foxtel cross, but that allowed everyone to socialise and/or go for a second cigarette. Earlier, LH and I went to the smokers room for an initial cigarette, and I was introduced to the MC, Costas 'Tony the Yugoslav' Kilias. Just as we were finishing, in strode both a verbose Mark Bosnich and Robert Carlos himself, who for no particular reason smiled at me before he sat down for a ciggy! There you go!

Roberto Carlos, the man of the moment himself,
snapped during a quiet moment away from the festivities.

The interview with Roberto Carlos via his interpreter, the sponsor of the night, the presumably multilingual Morris Pagniello was interesting enough. Was Roberto speaking Spanish or Portuguese? I cannot remember. I felt some sort of vindication when Carlos stated that the most important thing that Australian soccer needed to achieve was to create great players. This was exactly what I had said to LH in an earlier conversation when I mentioned that the greatest failure of the current regime is their inability to have fostered any players that can match our Golden Generation (which was not just the 2006 team. In my opinion it encompasses the years from the mid 1990s).

Some of the other interviewees revealed some interesting information such as Bozza's request for LESS players in his defensive wall at free kicks! And even more interestingly was Goran Lozanovski telling us that he was in tears of joy at one point during the World Club Championship in 2000. Is this the apex of South's peak moment in its history? If so, there is an irony that someone called Goran Lozanovski was the person who would encapsulate it. Bozza also pushed the line about the women’s game growing in record numbers. I wondered if this was to counter the AFL push into the female ‘market’ or simply because he was interviewing Lisa De Vanna.

The last interviewee that piqued my interest was Paul Wade. Now I am led to believe that he has been less than effusive about South and the NSL in general. He certainly has little idea of what is going on at South now, as he asked if Lefteri was still there playing his trumpet! His less than effusive manner may have prompted his interviewer, Mark Bosnich (who is much taller in person than some of us imagined) to ask if South Melbourne should change their DNA. I cannot remember Wadey's response, but ultimately I didn't think he believed South Melbourne should be in the league primarily because of their 'DNA'. In some ways it was strange to have him as one of the key guests. But it was interesting nonetheless, especially when someone asked him if Australia could ever win the World Cup to which he said 'NO'. Personally, I do not particularly like his style of answering questions. It's not conducive to having an exchange of ideas.

But at least having Wadey there provided a counter to any pie in the sky thoughts about getting in the A-League. There is still a school of thought among some that the likes of South shouldn't be considered for inclusion. And if I can use the pub test (the Blackburn Hotel to be exact), among my suburbanite friends there are a couple who refuse to countenance South's inclusion. The majority however are not perturbed and are in fact keen on a South Melbourne bid insofar as it provides a point of difference to the existing arrangements. They certainly are not aware of any ‘falsehoods’ being put out there. It’s all about the Sell!

To finish off, a South Melbourne Hellas event wouldn't be complete without the obligatory infighting among the 'fans'. For a moment I thought I was attending a vital cup match between South Melbourne and a lower league club, and South was losing 4-1 in the 80th minute. But then I realised it was a (presumably?) drunk former 'player' (who went on to Hollywood 'stardom') who started throwing abuse towards a table near us. I am not sure if he was directing it at a particular person or a group of people because no one (thankfully!) at the table responded. Luckily Mr Thedoso .... oops I better not mention his real name (let’s call him Costas Mandylor) departed without further rancour.

And kudos to Bill Papastergiadis for no further unnecessary embellishments. Someone, maybe Bill himself, even made the statement about South Melbourne being one of two clubs to have featured in every season of the NSL. Let’s stick to the facts from now on.

Everything in its right place - some overdue thoughts on the Ferenc Puskas statue

Ferenc Puskas bust at Real Madrid
training ground, Valdebabas, Spain.

Here is another post which would have been better off shorter and presented in a more timely fashion. So it goes.

Some of the photos of the various statues on this page were sourced from 'From Ptich to Plinth: The Sporting Statues Project', a quite interesting website with a fair bit of academic content as well. 

In retrospect, it made a lot of sense to walk from Flinders Street Station to Gosch’s Paddock along the Yarra. Yes, I had gotten into the city too early for the scheduled start of the unveiling of the Ferenc Puskas statue, but it was a nice day for that walk anyway, along the shaded path, just before it got too hot.

Along the way, I came across a broad spectrum of Melburnians. There were those making their way up to the tennis centre for the Davis Cup doubles tie; tourists; joggers; cyclists at various points along the Lycra-wearing spectrum; families out for a stroll; rowers on the river.

Statue of Collingwood champion Bob Rose, outside
Collingwood's Holden Centre headquarters.

Coming up to the revamped and renamed Glasshouse, now occupied by the Collingwood Football Club and re-named the 'Holden Centre', I saw the statue of Collingwood champion Bob Rose, captured in mid-baulk, and thought about how far away he was from home, both geographically and chronologically. How much would he recognise of what Collingwood had become? Would he wonder why his statue was not at Victoria Park, the scene of his greatest triumphs?

I then walked past Olympic Park, or what remains of it after Collingwood’s annexation of the stadium. This is where Puskas’ crowning achievement during his involvement in Australian soccer took place, the onetime de facto – and democratic – home of Victorian soccer. It had hosted Socceroo matches, National Soccer League matches and Victorian finals ranging from top-tier and Dockerty Cup deciders to amateur cup finals. Of course you would not know that if you looked at it now, but some peoples' histories are more important than others.

Statue of John Landy helping up Ron Clarke,outside what was once
Olympic Park.

Then it was past the statue of John Landy helping up Ron Clarke, which at least provided a sign of athletics’ past at the venue. At this point I was joined by an older, grey-haired gentleman wearing a suit - a bit too for me much considering how hot it had already become - complete with an embroidered Melbourne Victory jacket. We pooled our efforts into trying to find where the Puskas statue was meant to be unveiled. I never caught the man's name, and he didn't learn mine, even though he had attempted to tell me about his connection to Puskas.

We then went past the Bubbledome where keen Bruce Springsteen fans had already camped out hours before the gates were due to open for The Boss' concert. My grey-haired companion then saw some people he knew exiting the car park, and I left him to it. I proceeded around the eastern side of the Bubbledome, to the back of a Melbourne Storm training ground to where a couple of small marquees had been erected. The caterers had arrived, but not many others as yet.

The statue prior to its unveiling. Photo: Paul Mavroudis

I mention the existence of all these people not just to set the scene (which is a literary weakness of mine anyway), but to note the complete and utter obscurity of the unveiling of this statue as an event in its own right. Not that statue unveilings are usually big events in Australia, let alone for a soccer player, but that all added to the unnatural feel of this event even before it had properly got under way.

The statue was sitting underneath some trees almost in a grove, covered by a black cloth, out of the way of most foot traffic likely to approach the Bubbledome. On that matter, I found myself in polite disagreement with Roy Hay, who felt that there would be plenty of foot traffic that would come across the statue where it was situated. But more on that later.

Because before the statue could be unveiled, there was the necessity of enduring the official proceedings, which I assumed would be relatively short, so we could get to the business of seeing the statue and taking our share of the complimentary food and drink on offer. How wrong I would be on that front.

A small crowd gradually built up, a mix of elements of the local Hungarian diaspora, assorted official flunkies of the government and sporting worlds; a small official South Melbourne Hellas contingent; Australia’s preeminent soccer historian in the form of Roy Hay; South Melbourne Hellas fan and local Greek sports journalist George Karantonis; and me. Oh, and those who were due to speak as part of the day's formalities.

Les Murray opened up proceedings, discussing Puskas the player and what he meant to Hungarians of that era, followed by a video montage blighted by the kind of rousing, over-the-top symphonic montage music we should have all become de-sensitised to by now. Then for reasons that I still cannot fathom, Mark Bosnich was asked to speak. Bosnich had never played for a side coached by Puskas, nor played (so far as I’m aware) against a team coached by Puskas, and yet there he was, asked to be the day’s equivalent of Bob Newhart being asked to speak at Krusty the Clown’s funeral.

@PaulMavroudis  In many we ways we all learned from Puskas... Even though, you know, many of us never... watched him play.

— David Henning (@DavidHenning86) February 4, 2017

Peter Tsolakis, Mehmet Durakovic, Kimon Taliadoros and Joe Palatsides.
Photo: Roy Hay.

The most poignant part of proceedings soon followed however, when four members of the South Melbourne Hellas side that Puskas coached to the 1991 NSL title were given the opportunity to reminisce. Peter ‘Gus’ Tsolakis was first, and he provided perhaps the most profound insights into Puskas’ soccer idealism. Tsolakis recalled playing on the wing and tracking back to defend during a training session, and subsequently getting told off by Puskas: ‘that’s the full-back’s job – your job is to score goals’.

A statement like that reflected Puskas’ idealistic but also antiquated views on how to play football, one in which there was little room for cynicism, let alone tactics. Tsolakis went on to recall another simple instruction from Puskas: ‘show me what you learned as a child’, thus giving licence to his players to be creative, and to enjoy themselves, and to remember that the crowd is there to be entertained, that the game is about goals, but also that it is a players’ game, not a coach’s one.

Ferenc Puskas statue, Obuda (Budapest), Hungary.
Scuplture by Gyula Pauer and Dávid Tóth,
The statue was 'conceived the idea from a photograph of Puskás
 enthralling a group of children with his ball control
 at the Toros de Las Ventas square in Madrid'

Mehmet Durakovic recalled being re-united with Puskas when Durakovic was captain of Selangor, and Puskas was there to coach the Hungarian national team against them. Puskas slapped Mehmet in greeting, shocking the Asian onlookers, who had very different rules of etiquette around physical contact.

Current Football Federation Victoria president Kimon Taliadoros recalled practicing free kicks with his non-preferred left foot, and being castigated for it by the notoriously single-sided Puskas. When Taliadoros scored a long-range bomb with his left foot for South against Melbourne Croatia at Somers Street, he ran to Puskas to let him know all about it – only to be greeted by Puskas wielding a doubled-handed mountza, the Greek hand gesture of insult descended from the Byzantine practice of smearing ashes over the faces of criminals.

Ferenc Puskas bust, Zala County, Hungary.

(For reference, there is also of course the recollection by Paul Wade in his autobiography Captain Socceroo, of Wade initially interpreting the mountzes he would receive from the crowd as a variation of a high five.)

Then it was time for one-time South Melbourne sponsor, then Melbourne Victory shareholder, and now Tasmanian A-League bid backer Robert Belteky to speak. As the Australian delegate to the Puskás Foundation Board of Trustees, Belteky was apparently instrumental in getting this statue commissioned and brought to Melbourne. Unfortunately, while Belteky spoke for a while, most of what he said was inaudible to those not underneath the marquee. This was not due to any technical malfunction, but rather due to Belteky mumbling his way through most of his prepared remarks.

Ferenc Puskas bust, Kobanya-Kispest traffic junction, Budapest, Hungary

Then it was the turn of a representative of the Hungarian government to pontificate for a while (a quick google says it was Zsolt Németh, chairman of the Hungarian parliament's foreign affairs committee) saying nothing of importance, while those members of the audience not fortunate enough to have snagged a spot under the marquee tried to avoid becoming roasted by the heat of the day.

Then another speaker in the never-ending cavalcade, a public servant or state government flunky of some sort standing in for the Victorian Minister for Sport John Eren (turns out it was Liberal state upper house member Bruce Atkinson). The aforementioned flunky at least managed to pique my interest as we sweltered in the shade, after what was almost an hour and a half's worth of speeches and formalities, by somehow bringing in a connection to Melbourne Victory and the Bubbledome, and throwing in the line that roughly went, 'wasn't it wonderful that South Melbourne had contributed to soccer's growth in Australia by bringing over Puskas, but wasn't it even better that we had now subsumed that tribalism and moved forward with the A-League and teams like Melbourne Victory'.

Ferenc Puskas statue, Pancho Arena, Flecsut Hungary.
It bears a striking resemblance to the statue unveiled in Gosch's Paddock.
Sculpture by Béla Domonkos 

Missing from the reminiscences of Puskas’ time in Australia was the story of how he got here and how he came to coach South Melbourne Hellas, regardless of whatever conjecture there is around that story. One can understand and forgive leaving out the controversies, while still feeling if not aggrieved, then at the very least disheartened by the lack of acknowledgement of the Greek community’s experience during this celebration of Puskas’ time in Melbourne.

If, as was acknowledged on the day, Puskas’ time in Australia went unnoticed by Australian society, then why was so little attention paid to those who did pay attention – in this case, one thinks specifically of Melbourne soccer’s community and the local Greek soccer community in particular who would flock to training sessions to be near Puskas?

Ferenc Puskas statue, Szentes, Hungary.
Sculpture by László Csíky
Photo: Dr László Csíky

If nothing else, Puskas' time in Australia was a supreme exemplar of what soccer was like in this country at the time. It was a pursuit that was followed madly by its adherents, but which was nigh on invisible to the rest of Australia society. One of world football's greatest was here for three years, living here in almost total obscurity - except, importantly, for those who knew and understood. It many ways, Puskas' time mirrored that of those who watched him, especially those of the predominantly central and southern European migrants involved with soccer at the time - both subaltern, and existing in a parallel cultural world to that of mainstream Australia.

There is little doubt that Puskas’ tenure at South had at least something to do with Puskas’ tenure as manager of Panathinakos in the 1970s. Because Puskas could speak Greek, but very little English, Ange Postecoglou, who was captain of that Hellas side, would act as the de facto translator. There were no South Melbourne Hellas office holders or supporters of that era asked to speak, nor any Greek-Australian soccer journalists of that time.

Instead, apart from those former South Melbourne players, the emphasis of the day was more on Puskas the phenomenon, to the point where even his managerial career was being extolled, when the record shows that he was in fact a mediocre manager at best.

Ference Puskas statue in Gosch's Paddock, Melbourne.
Photo: George Donikian.

Then finally, the statue was unveiled, and I must say I was underwhelmed. Keep in mind though that I'm at best an armchair art-critic when it comes to the visual arts - but I think there is something to the idea that soccer is a difficult sport to capture effectively in marble or bronze. With the exception of a goalkeeper making a save - something much better suited to photography than sculpture - the game's most poetic moments are embedded in movement, not in moments of stasis.

In that sense, cricket and footy have significant advantages when it comes to presenting heroic moments of stasis: for cricket, a batsman captured at the end of of his follow through on a batting stroke, or a bowler at or just after the moment of release; for footy, the high mark or the booming kick.

With the exception of the aforementioned diving save, soccer's most significant moments are not about stasis, but movement. The dribble (could you sculpt a nutmeg?), the interplay of a string of passes with the requisite movement off the ball, and of course the swerving shot, which at its peak exists purely in the realms of applied physics, independent of any player.

Ferenc Puskas during his stint as South Melbourne Hellas coach,
resplendent in a trademark ugly jumper.

Having said that, such observations do not seek to elevate the aesthetics of one sport over another, as was attempted - and irretrievably badly at that - by academic Stephen Alomes at the 2012 Worlds of Football Conference held by Victoria University. Nevertheless, having set up the parameters of soccer's most pleasing aesthetic moments in this way, this statue (to me if seemingly not to anyone else at the unveiling) seems lumpen and lacking in grace.

There is of course, also the incongruity of having a statue of Ferenc Puskas the player in Australia as opposed to the manager, despite Puskas having never played the game in Australia.

Yet to be completed Ferenc Puskas statue.
Ultimate destination unknown.
Sculptor, László Csíky.

Now despite the strong desire of what has been dubbed Australian #sokkahtwitter - including your correspondent - that Melbourne's Puskas statue be of the overweight, bad jumper wearing Puskas, or the tracksuit wearing Puskas, or at least the suit wearing, grand final day Puskas, one had to be realistic. Yet, all the same the fact it was a statue of the playing Puskas as opposed to a managerial Puskas was disappointing - the statue of a playing Puskas is utterly alienating, existing outside of almost all local context.

If the most poignant of reminiscences on the day were about Puskas' kindliness, humility and gentlemanly conduct while he was a football manager in Australia, this statue fails to get anywhere near that feeling. It was noted at the unveiling, almost as an aside, that this will be one of four Puskas statues around the world. Did they mean based on this mould? Or did they mean overall? If it is the former, then it hardly makes our statue unique. If it is the latter, it is not much better, as busts and statues of Puskas have sprung forth in many places, especially in Hungary. All the more reason then that our statue should have been of the Puskas that we knew.

The statue's position at the back end of a rugby field also separates Puskas from where he did his greatest work here. To a very large extent, this is unavoidable - Middle Park Stadium no longer exists; Olympic Park also no longer exists, if we're being honest; and for whatever reason (see later notes on this), the Hungarians and the Puskas Foundation, who funded this enterprise (along with a regional tour of the FIFA Puskas Award and a gala dinner on the Friday night before the statue's unveiling), didn't feel like placing it outside Lakeside (which would pose its own historical-conceptual issues, ala the Bob Rose statue, but at least it would be closer to where South Melbourne Hellas currently lives).

Soccer players statue at Australian Institute of Sport.
Scupltor, John Robinson.
Photo: Philip Abercrombie. 

The path that the statue sits alongside is very much out of the way - the majority of the mass of people that will head to the Bubbledome for its various sporting and musical events, or heaven forbid, Olympic Park for a Collingwood VFL game, will not come across the statue, as most people who visit those venues tend to come from Richmond station, or via the tram, or if they're feeling particularly fit, from along the river from Flinders Street. The people most likely to come across the statue are cyclists, who probably won't stop, or a Melbourne Storm player collecting a stray ball during a training session.

Sporting statues in Australia seem to me to be a fairly recent phenomenon. Before that, when it came to erecting statues we probably did much as the British did - when we commissioned sculptures, it was of soldiers, politicians, explorers, and maybe the occasional scientist. In more recent years, as sport has started catching up not just on the merits of history in its own right, but especially the propaganda value that it can elicit in the hearts and minds of the general public, various sporting bodies have seen the cultural heft that can be achieved by neoclassical tributes to sporting icons. Thus footy statues have sprung up in all sorts of usual (MCG) and unusual (Braybrook Hotel on Ballarat Road) places, and even tennis has chimed in with the cheaper alternative of using busts of its champions at the tennis precinct. (the only one of which was immediately recognisable was John Newcombe, because of the moustache).

Johnny Warren statue outside the
Sydney Football Stadium.
Sculptor, Cathy Weiszmann.
Photo: Johnny Warren Comnunity.

Aside from this Puskas statue, there are three extant soccer statues or sculptures in Australia that I am aware of. One of these is at the Australian Institute of Sport, and is of a generic soccer scene, with anonymous players. There is also the statue of Johnny Warren outside the Sydney Football Stadium. And lastly, there is the statue of the late Dylan Tombides outside Perth Oval.

In their own way all of these statues - including the Puskas one - represent some crucial aspect of the Australian soccer experience, even if that was not the chief intent of each of the sculptors. In Tombides, we have the personification of the young Australian soccer player venturing overseas, to Europe and especially England, seeking their footballing destiny and fortune. In Warren, we have the supreme archetype of the Australian soccer evangelist - noted more for those efforts rather than the exploits of their playing career. In the statue of the anonymous players, we have the anonymity of the game and its participants. And in Puskas, we have the overseas guest, a giant of the sport living almost anonymously in a town which was and still is alternately oblivious to soccer's existence, and envious of soccer's global reach. But the net effect of all of them is to remind Australians of soccer's sense of displacement within Australian culture. Even Warren, whose club career was entirely spent in Australia, is more notable for his efforts to create a place for a global game in this most crowded and parochial of sporting nations.

Now one can, as is often the case with my writings, take all of this pontificating with a large dose of salt. I am almost by nature drawn to the farcical and absurd in situations such as this, unwilling to accept the prosaic and straightforward nature of such projects. As nonsensical as I find the statue's placement to be, it will apparently be joined in future by other statues in what has at least been informally dubbed an 'avenue of champions'. I am told that there had been an attempt or an offer made by FFV to the people behind the Puskas statue project to have it located outside Lakeside Stadium, but that the decision to locate it at that particular part of Gosch's Paddock had already been made.

Stature of Dylan Tombides
outside Perth Oval..
Sculptor, Robin Hitchcock.
Photo: Perth Glory

If this 'avenue of champions' does actually come about, one wonders who will pay for it, and what hope there is of soccer getting any more statues as part of such a project. (I will leave the question of which Australian, or especially Victorian, soccer player would merit a statue open for now). This statue of Puskas reputedly cost $75,000, and was paid for by Belteky; though to cast doubt on that, there are various media reports which suggest this was all done by the Hungarians, who plan to unveil three more statues of Puskas around the world; even this monument then is not unique, but instead intended to imply a message of ubiquity.

(I should note that of the four Puskas statues to be created, I don't think any of the photos of the Puskas statues I've included here, apart from the Gosch's Paddock one, are part of that project. I have searched for a Puskas statue in Madrid, but I do not think one exists, and thus I assume that one of these four planned statues will end up there.)

It has been intimated to me that the Victorian Government initially didn't even want the statue, but after much negotiation eventually came around to the idea. As part of one of the most extended quid pro quo agreements I can think of, this whole thing is being done at the behest of the city of Budapest's bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. Apparently, when Melbourne was bidding for the 1996 Olympic Games, Ferenc Puskas had acted as a sort of ambassador for the bid.

In its design, procurement, placement and veneration, the statue is more about Hungarians' ideas of Puskas than of what his Australian tenure meant to those who experienced it first hand. Later, I would attend the Moreland City vs Werribee City game at Campbell Reserve - apart from those at the game who had also been at the statue unveiling, such as George Donikian, no one would have been the wiser that a Ferenc Puskas statue had been unveiled on the same day. Why would it?

Nine years of people visiting to see if they've been defamed

There were many times this year where I thought the blog was not up to scratch, but that may very well be just your typical self-absorbed writer's self-loathing cry for attention and validation.

And when I look back on the year that was, there were still some good pieces in there, two of which - the Victory brawl post, and the A-League expansion bid musings post - managed to get into this blog's all time top ten list in terms of hits.

Anyway we're nine years in -  and I do include South of the Border's audience in this - and I have no intention of stopping. Next year promises to be an interesting one for the club on many levels, as well as for me personally, but we'll cross those bridges when we come to them.

For now, thanks to the following people:

Foti for helping organise and circulate the petition calling for an EGM early this year. Strange how the AGM managed to be announced within five minutes of the end of that round 1 game.

The Agitator, for providing many South Melbourne match programmes, both from home and away fixtures. Also Mark Boric, Gav, Chris Egan and JJ75. for sharing parts of their own collections. I will try harder to catch up on the massive backlog of stuff that I have borrowed from people.

Joe Gorman for prompting me to go through a trawl of the blog's archives, and for recognising the value of the kinds of stuff I'm looking at for my thesis.

Kon for sending in his memories of a now former house, which prompted some good discussion on Garvey's Baby Blues.

Savvas Tzionis for his piece on what's going on in New South Wales.

Vin Maskell for putting up a version of my last day at Chaplin Reserve piece on his Scoreboard Pressure site.

Shoot Farken for publishing my review of Nuts! (nothing to do with soccer, but a film worth seeing if you can.)

Supermercado for providing the 'People's Champ' moniker.

Mark Bosnich for actually following through with his promise to meet with myself and Pave Jusup. Sorry for the folks at home, but as it was a private conversation, details will not be posted here.

Football Today for retweeting the odd post.

Anyone else who contributed artefacts.

Anyone I stole photos from.

Everyone who voted for Lucas Neill.

Everyone who left comments.

Everyone who shared this stuff on Twitter.

Everyone who gave me and Gains a lift somewhere, including Shouty Mike.

Matthew Klugman, Ian Syson, and Gains.

And Peter Kokotis, if you are out there somewhere, can you please finally send me a copy of that photo of Yarra Park Aias? Thanks.

P.S.
The things you find when you google yourself.

Assorted reactions to FFA's Whole of Football Plan

Now I'm not going to go into too much detail about a document whose contents were already decided before they'd even conducted their infamous box ticking consultation from 2014 (for some reason the most popular article ever on this blog). So they want to be the number one sport and cement their autocratic rule by abolishing the states. They told us that months ago - and if we're fair dinkum, there is nothing in this document that should surprise any of us. So here are a bunch of mostly hysterical reactions to this announcement.

Misplaced anger
Some people have been upset by the For Modern Football site's satirical take on South's press release. If anyone should be upset though it should be me, because I was doing this kind of stuff years ago.

Cynical
The stated aim of making soccer more affordable to play, especially junior registrations, is a motherhood statement that should be eclipsed by certain realities of the situation, including the backgrounds and statements of those putting forward that rhetoric.

When during the NPL consultation process former FFV CEO Mark Rendell compared the then potential cost of the NPL junior fees to a sport like swimming (as well as classifying South's then $3,500 program as a 'Rolls Royce' program); when Tom Kalas tried to justify the cost of that South program by comparing it to dance, music or karate; and when Kyle Patterson compared the costs of junior soccer to his kid's violin lessons - what does this mean in the context of making soccer more affordable for kids?

At best it's another motherhood statement in a document full of them; at worst, it's insincere about soccer's attempts to go middle class. It's language which speaks to an aspirational segment of Australian society which is not concerned primarily with cost, but with value. In the same way that increasing numbers of middle class people scrimp, save or make sacrifices to send their children to expensive private schools - and to hell with those left behind the in the public system - it's the perceived value that's more important than the price of that sacrifice.

[A side note - whether there is also a cultural and class consciousness element to this is also worth considering. Several years ago on a certain forum, a bloke posted his observation that some middle class English people were moving towards the upper class game of rugby union, in part because of the persistent and/or residual association of soccer with the working class. I don't know if that observation was accurate, and the English class system is obviously quite different to Australia's, but there is I think something intriguing about that assertion, and something that could very well be applicable to those who see soccer as providing a more cosmopolitan sporting option than the insular and boorish (bogan?) Aussie Rules and rugby league cultures.]

In other words, soccer is now a middle class game. The participant is only useful so long as they can be leveraged for more and more money. It's not about fun any more, or belonging to a club, or even being able to take up one sport during the winter and another during the summer. Each soccer loving individual in this country has had a monetary value placed upon their head, whether they are a player, parent, volunteer, fan, media person or even - and while undoubtedly a sign of the times, also a bit frightening - someone mostly interested in soccer video games. And like the cult-ish Evangelical mega-churches the 'we are football' branding and rhetoric reeks of these days, it's bring your credit card with you when you come to worship.

Of course if your bank balance is smaller, or if your involvement in the game generates minimal value for the upper tiers - or heaven forbid, doesn't agree with every part of this Great Leap Forward - you can go and get stuffed. This is disturbing to me because in my line of work I'm required (and want) to see the best in people and their potential. FFA does the opposite. The concept of people getting into and enjoying soccer as an end in itself has been thrown under the bus.

As increasingly seems to be the case these days, I'm reminded of a comment Melbourne Heart CEO Scott Munn made at an academic conference a few years back, about the relative pointlessness of school visits by his organisation.

As an aside, one of the more curious things that was said by Munn, was that one off attempts at trying to convert people to your cause like school clinics were almost doomed to fail (he used some clever analogy about pissing on your own leg - I can't remember how it went, but it was quite funny). 

This was a point expanded upon at last year's Whole of Football Plan meeting in Melbourne, when the failure to leverage soccer's existing base for the A-League was something which FFA wanted corrected (fair enough), but was a point nevertheless which showed how different the priorities of those at the top and those at the bottom were.

The FFA... seemed to think that things like school visits and absurdly inflated participation numbers - which included intangibles like kids playing street soccer - were all about converting kids into being A-League fans. The difference with those of the community club sector was the community club representatives were showing annoyance at the lack of school visits not because of the missed opportunity of getting kids to follow the A-League, but to get them involved with the game of soccer as opposed to other sports.

Some people think soccer is first and foremost a great game to be involved in. Others think the most important thing is not how much you enjoy the experience, but how much they can fleece you for. I guess this is why I'm not in marketing.

Gallows humour

SMFCBLUES07 wrote:

I'll do the honours here Press release: smfc wish to announce since there is no future in football we have abandoned ship and will refocus our efforts in strip clubs not social room

The one with a forced literary allusion
In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved,  the slaves learn that 'definitions belong to the definers, not the defined'. The FFA has spent the past ten years applying that lesson. Soccer is, among other things, wogs, violence, incompetence and marginality. Football is other things: good things, Australian things, mainstream things. Most importantly, FFA has learned from the disparagement that soccer received from other codes over the decades, and vowed that it would never succumb to the same fate - not only this, but they have striven to take it to the next level, by appropriating the language of the oppressor and using it as a successful example of wedge politics.

Terms like new dawn and bitter, mainstream and ethnic, new football and old soccer  - they all create division, and almost everyone has bought into them, this writer included. From our side of the fence, there have been those like the long gone Pumpkin Seed Eaters who have attempted creating other names, such as foundation clubs; journalists, when they weren't completely on the bandwagon, traditional clubs; FFV and FFA when they tried to find the most patronising PC term possible, community clubs. The net effect of all these definitions though was to point towards two directions - the past and the future.

Regardless of whether one got sucked into using the terms created by those with the power, or those without it - even my facetious and petty 'I am soccer' catchphrase in response to 'we are football' - the debate has been had on the powerful's terms. It's too late now to to start using different language in the hope that it will somehow turn everything around, but it's not too late to define ourselves outside of the parameters that have set. How we would do that, and what would be appropriate terms to use is an etymological process I'd be interested in seeing developed.

Official
The club released its own response, and it's another in a recent line of measured posts.

MEDIA RELEASE – THE POSSIBLE END OF ASPIRATIONAL FOOTBALL
May 6, 2015 

South Melbourne FC welcomes Football Federation Australia opening up the dialogue about Australia’s football future with the ‘Whole of Football Plan’ released on 5 May 2015. 

However, the current FFA Plan spells the possible end for aspirational football in this country. 

The proposed Plan currently provides no obvious club pathway that allows any club that aspires to develop and improve their process, systems and connection with their communities – or more importantly succeeds on the field – to be promoted as occurs throughout the football world. 

We are also disappointed that the FFA does not detail plans for further development of a second tier of Australian football, to facilitate the intended expansion of the Hyundai A-League and ultimately the implementation of a viable promotion and relegation system. 

Promotion and relegation would assist the improvement of the quality of our top division and provide a breeding ground for players, coaches, officials and aspiring clubs. 

More generally, a key component of all successful ‘plans’ is ‘implementation detail.’ We are keen to review that detail when it gets released. 

The FFA has certainly made great in-roads for our code’s development (for example football broadcasting and the launching of the Westfield FFA Cup), however we are mindful that strategic errors have also been made in the past. 

As a key stakeholder of football in Australia, we will be contacting the FFA to understand and obtain greater detail about their planning processes and to ensure the long term viability and growth of our club. 

Leo Athanasakis, SMFC President
Tom Kalas, SMFC Director

Whatever I may think of the club's approach over these past few years, I'm not going to go out and fault it. They tried to play nice, they tried to be conciliatory, they tried to be collegiate. Melbourne Knights tried to be difficult, tried to dig their heels in, tried to make a scene. No issue with that either. The fact is if they don't want you, they don't want you, and no amount of niceness or hostility is going to change things. Still, it'd be nice if some people, outside of those who are with us now, could have made a bit more of a fuss, if only for show.

Abandoned

This photo is the one the club chose to use to illustrate its press release. I made a comment on the club's Facebook page that it was slightly mischievous. It's a pointed reminder of what we once were, and where we are now. More importantly, it's a reminder that those who could, at the very least, speak up for us - not in an outrageous way, but in a way that they believe that we are still relevant - have chosen not to do so.

That the photo contains two of our most beloved members adds to the sting. And where's former president George Donikian? Spruiking the A-League semi-final with George Calombaris. Where is the Greek community?  At the A-League or the footy, or making fun of us on our Facebook page, telling us we're doomed, that we should give up because they have, and that there's a newer, shinier toy to play with. To be marginalised by the authorities is one thing, but to be marginalised by your own, that's the biggest insult. Making fun of us because we don't get the crowds we used to, as if the people pointing that out aren't part of that problem. And where will Enosi 59 be this week?

Boy, I really didn't see that one coming/Defeatist
Now the part of the announcement that most South fans (plus assorted remnants of old soccer and their associated new dawn sympathisers) picked up on was the FFA finally putting to rest promotion and relegation to the A-League. I am of course on the record as stating that I don't believe promotion is suitable for Australian soccer, and I still hold to that position. But no matter how harebrained I think that idea is, there is something I admire in it, and which seems to have been lost in the wash - and that is that at some level a belief in promotion and relegation is actually an endorsement in FFA, the last ten years and in the future of Australian soccer. It puts forward the belief that there is a viable future soccer in Australia, not just for the 'mainstream' but also the 'traditional'. It's a belief that's not about the old antagonisms, but about sharing a space.

If that's an example of the circumstances of the past ten years creating a sort of forced humility, then so be it. The problem with FFA's approach of incrementally increasing the number of teams in the top flight is that there is still no detail about what plan they'll use. Their own history on the matter is full of contradictions: last October Frank Lowy says that promotion and relegation will happen soon; now they rule it out; David Gallop says they'll fish where the fish are from now on, but now adds that any region with a population of 500,000 will be looked at, despite the problems of Central Coast and North Queensland; they briefly mention in the Whole f Football document that applications for an A-League licence from an NPL team would be possible, but offer no details, no pathway, no method.

Absurd (sans Simpsons reference)
So how do we get back to the top? If the A-League teams monopolise the majority of youth development, if no matter how well you do on and off the park you're effectively locked out, where's the incentive to excel by the processes of reform and self-improvement and by trying to follow the rules such as they exist in the NPL? To merely achieve the honour of being the longest lasting of the ethnic club museum pieces? When I asked on Twitter, rhetorically of course, for someone, anyone, to at least show us the hoops that we need to jump through to make the grade, Mark Bosnich offered to explain it to myself along with the others involved in the relevant discussion, in person next time he comes to Melbourne.

@jgrb @PaveJusup @pavlaki1969 simple,u guys r in Melbourne yes? When I'm down next time let me take u 2 lunch and listen 2 ur fears.xmb

— Mark Bosnich (@TheRealBozza) May 5, 2015

While I appreciate the gesture, and would happily take part in such a meeting, I'm curious as to what Bosnich thinks it will achieve. Does he have some special insight or inside knowledge that's not available to the rest of the soccer public?

Absurd (with Simpsons reference)

What I imagine Mark Bosnich will feel like if he ever follows through with his promise to meet with the bitters.

Personal
This isn't just a story about old soccer fans, or South fans in particular. This is a story that has deep resonance to me as an individual. Now I've never run a club, but I have the utmost respect for those people that do put their hand up to do it these days - even when I disagree with them, and even when they fail. No one is closer to the coal face than they are in terms of seeing the problems and institutional injustices every day, and no one understands them better.

But having written this blog for seven and a half years, and having been involved in the online arguments for long before that, I feel I have a unique relationship to this problem. Getting reconnected with South Melbourne in 2006, and having my writing on the forums praised and encouraged (especially by Ian Syson) has lead to a number of peculiar outcomes.

Firstly, for better and for worse I have become the chief voice of South Melbourne fans outside of what the club controls and what some fans on certain forums put out. My self-declared desire to be the reasonable one, to play a straight bat so to speak, has won me some admirers; but the overall effect has been that the necessity and rigour of trying to fine tune the arguments combined with the increasing and ongoing marginalisation of South means that I have found myself backed into an ideological corner.

I'm not alone in that corner, but that's not really the point. There have been plenty of times when I've been jubilant or outraged, cautiously optimistic or maudlin, inspired or defeatist - these are the general swings and roundabouts of being involved with the game at any level. The point here is that because of South Melbourne I have ended up with the career of sorts that I have now, and the option to be broader and more engaged with Australian soccer such as it exists these days.

Every few months I end up having a discussion with Ian Syson where he worries about my own increasing marginalisation in the soccer writing world, a world where he thinks I can contribute intelligent and cogent arguments to a wider reading audience than I do now. And yet every time we have this conversation, I find some myself being more adamant that I can't make myself be the kind of writer that Syson (and others) would want me to be; and instead of embracing those possibilities of taking an interest in and writing for a broader audience, with each passing year I find my focus getting narrower, and my outlook become one that can allow fewer compromises and extensions of faith and trust.

While a measure of this attitude is inevitably down to my being an introvert, a large part of it is because by associating myself so strongly with South Melbourne, I have been made smaller and more insular by the circumstances of our decline, and my reaction towards those whom I hold responsible. Thus as South has been marginalised culturally, so have I, and I can imagine that at times this is a feeling that many South fans have felt over the last ten years or so.

And while I'm a doom and gloom merchant by trade, the fact is that I don't like partaking in defeatism for the sake of defeatism. A former friend, from back in the days when I was involved with left-wing student politics at Melbourne University, who had me pegged as a hopeless pessimist, later told me that she'd been mistaken; that rather than being an outright pessimist, I was a foolhardy optimist, who when my expectations weren't met, descended into cynicism and irony as a coping mechanism. Amateur psychology it may have been, but the fact that she took the time to think about it resonated with me as much as the content of the message itself.

I resolved then to lower my expectations, to be more cautious. But no matter how much you try to do that, we as human beings inevitably see and come to understand these things through our own prism. In that way, South fans see this plan as hostile to our interests. Outside of us, an acquiescent and largely apathetic soccer public just goes along with it. All the pride, the incapacitating anger, the depression that we experience is at best for those outside of our sphere seen as a regrettable and ultimately forgettable novelty.

Having by and large conformed to the new regime, outsiders do not understand the pressure that exists to conform to or engage with this regime - and that by not doing so it means that you become smaller, narrower, and seen as selfish almost by default, when all you as a dedicated South fan see is your loyalty to the cause. I know this, because having been briefly on the other side of this schism, I've learned the arguments from both sides.

We have collectively been made smaller by the experience. There are people who have lost their passion for the game entirely, while others have given up the ghost on the national team. On the latter point, despite my diminished passion for the Socceroos, I never thought that I'd get to the point where I felt my relationship to the national team would have felt like it had been poisoned by South's predicament, but that's where I am now. It takes a certain level of intestinal fortitude to resist, which at times becomes too much to bear - when seen from the outside, it seems as if all sense of perspective is lost

There were many times when I was writing this post where I had to stop because I was so angry and despondent. That we care that much should be seen as a strength, not a weakness; but how do we convince not only others but ourselves, too, of that fact?

Pragmatic fatalism
So what do we do now? The same thing we always do. Support the club, try our best to make it bigger and better despite all the obstacles that we face. In that way we not only honour the work being put in now, but the history of the club as a whole.

Novermber 2014 digest

Some of the things that happened in November.

I'm reliably told that when we do it, it's called recruiting, not poaching.
Bonel 'Bones' Obradovic, central midfielder from Oakleigh, also ex-Northcote. Milos Lujic seems particularly pleased with this signing. David Stirton, a forward of sorts, arrives from Bentleigh Greens - maybe he wasn't Queenslander enough to play there. Luke Adams, a Kiwi defender with an Aussie passport. Also Andy Brennan from South Hobart. Brennan is a forward/winger, and the standout player in Tasmania over the past few years. This will be his second stint in the Victorian topflight, after his 2013 stint with Bentleigh was ruined by an osteitis pubis injury.

Chris Taylor has also been signed to what the club is calling a 'long term' deal, without specifying what long term means. The inference seems to be that Taylor will also be doing something like a technical director's role, which seems funny to me, because I thought that the roles of senior head coach and technical directors at NPL clubs were supposed to be separate by now.

Lastly, assistant coach Graham Hockless has left for Queensland. His replacement will be the recently retired Tsiaras. Some more obsessive and/or observant readers of South related media may have noted that I hinted towards that signing on the South Facebook page. Honestly, it was a lucky guess. Also, the meaning of the word 'honestly' has now changed.

Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it/When everyone's special, no one is/That's not enough! We demand MORE asbestos! MORE asbestos! MORE asbestos!
First up, we have the addition to NPL1 of Eastern Jets/Nunawading-without- anyone-from-the-real-Nunawading/Dr Angelo Postekos' Football Young Talent Time Superstar XFactor Dream Factory, and Murray United, who had already been granted licences from the original contingent of applicants with a year's delay so they could get up to speed in their own time. Then, because of the deal the FFV was forced into with the Coalition of the Unwilling last year, Moreland City and Eastern Lions - the winners of their respective State League 1 divisions have accepted the opportunity to move into NPL1. But no Preston. Seriously. They didn't win their respective title - they blew it in the last two rounds. If they're good enough, maybe they can join in 2016.

Also, Victory and Heart's youth teams are into the NPL Victoria, but not in our division - they'll start in NPL1, which is now split into two conferences, East and West. Everyone plays everyone in their own conference twice, and the teams from the other side once. It's like an oldskool NFL season, only with more chance of teams going bust and worse facilities that teams will be begging local governments to upgrade. Anyway, back to Victory and Heart. Some people will no doubt be aware that players from NPL teams, like our own Andy Kecojevic, play for those teams in National Youth League season (if you can call that handful of a games a season). Will those players choose to stick it out with their 'winter' clubs, or will they move across to their holiday house A-League setups on a permanent basis?

And also, are there enough facilities for everyone? Are there enough players? Are there enough coaches? Is there enough money?

Or, in other words...



Or, as a very wise man on soccer-forum.net said...

Can't see the problem here.

The clubs voted for this system/structure.

The clubs sued the FFV for this.

The clubs voted for all clubs to be given a fair and equal consideration.

The only thing the FFV have done is implement what the clubs wanted.

Are we suggesting that some clubs are more equal than others??

Survey 
I wonder if the results of the South Melbourne fans survey, even if just given in a gist, will ever be released? Probably more chance of the FFV's NPL facilities audit being made public. Also, when's the AGM?

On honouring soccer's Australian history, even those stupid wogs who spent 27 years in that trench warfare filled cesspit of history called the NSL. Did I mention the NSL sucked? Also, let's put the museum in Sydney.
Museums. They're actually complicated things to fund, locate and set up. For instance, where should history be stored and presented? Can a nation's soccer heritage be stored and presented effectively in just one location? What benefits are there in putting non-Sydney histories in Sydney, away from their origins? If non-Sydney centric materials aren't sent to Sydney, would a national soccer museum based in Sydney end up telling an almost inevitably Sydney centric version of history? What is the role of historians for Australian soccer? Is it to confront the myths and mythologisers or is it to jump onto whichever bandwagon is in charge at the time, in the hope of gaining more patronage, and isn't that something that could be asked of so many people in the game right now? What's the story they and/or we want to tell about Australia's soccer history, and who'll get to tell it?

Here are some of the thoughts I made on a Kevin Moore keynote address about the founding of England's National Football Museum, many of which would need to be considered I think in any attempt to recreate such an enterprise here:

First up was the keynote address by Kevin Moore, from England's National Football Museum. How do you create a museum for the entirety of the game, in a nation that has such fervour for the game? It's not easy. But Kevin Moore says you start off by not targeting it at die hard football fans, because they'll turn up anyway.

Because you see football as part of broader society, you don't try and gloss over all the negatives in the game's history, including the stadium tragedies, the violence, racism, misogyny and homophobia, no matter how distasteful these issues are to some. You provide an outlet for people to create and provide their own memories, within reason.

You do not make yourself the be all and end all of historical preservation. You work with local communities to find ways of preserving local history locally, and only step in to preserve history as a last resort. You try and tell stories, not just provide facts and figures. You recognise the importance of topophilia, but you do not become a slave to it, in part because football topophilia can be expressed in several ways.

In summary, Kevin Moore provided a very interesting look at the development of the National Football Museum, from its beginnings in Preston to its move to Manchester. Moore talked about the difficulties in securing funding, the fact that there is no national sports museum in England, and that the museum in some ways has to compete against Premier League club museums, which seek to tell a very different, hagiographic story, and which are often not standalone enterprises, but part of the 'stadium experience'.

The key parts for me are about hagiographies and local histories.With regards to the latter in particular, the emphasis should be on teaching local institutions - clubs, federations, local councils, whatever's relevant - how to maintain and preserve their own local histories locally. Australian soccer is such a diverse experience that to move it all into Parramatta (hypothetically) would be denying local people from being able to learn and add to their own soccer narratives, while replicating a top down approach to preserving history.

On the other hand...
Is the writer of the original article actually being serious? Considering he has to have a dig at the past for reasons I'm not sure of - except, possibly, because it's the right/cool/expected thing to do if you're not Joe Gorman, who is addicted to the street cred one gets as Anglo-Australian soccer fan hanging out with bitter wogs; at least that's my extrapolation of some stupid comment I read responding to one of his posts in The Guardian, probably the article on Middle Park -  I don't see the point, if that's going to be the dominant attitude. I mean, is it really going be worthwhile having a museum which will be:

1. Kings School vs Wanderers
2. Football doesn't exist outside of Sydney and, at a pinch, Newcastle.
3. 1974 Socceroos.
4. Huge gap due to ethnic strife.
5. Frank Lowy is grouse and stuff.

At least I learned what the word 'internecine' means.

Victorian Election Part 1 (Number 1 ticket holder vs wheeled after five years of waiting for the social club vs the bloke who put his hand up and then said for Number 1 ticket holder anyway).
Well, after a tough race between the shadow arts minister and current sitting member Martin Foley, and the Liberal candidate wheeled out when the Liberals finally signed the lease - and Tex Perkins, who once Foley said Labor would fund the repair and restoration of the Palais, said basically you don't need to vote for me anymore - it looks like at this stage that Foley will get retain the seat of Albert Park. Now where's the fuck is our social club?

Victorian Election Part 2 (Someone's crusin' for a bruisin'/Next year in Jerusalem) 

Speaking of the social club.

@cindyn liberal member in Doncaster saw my South top and took credit for the lease, I told him we're still waiting for the social club cash.
— Paul Touliatos (@pavlaki1969) November 28, 2014

In case you missed it
Me and Pave Jusup  talking about how much the NCIP sucks. Ian Syson is more ambivalent about it. Roy Hay thinks it's grouse.

Does not compute/pots and kettles/γαϊδούρια και πετινούς
So apparently earlier this month Perth Glory played a Cheltenham based souvlaki joint in the semi-finals of some kind of nationwide soccer tournament. Anyone got any idea what that was about? And to make things really absurd, the bloke who wrote this, is now noting in this article the patronising souvlaki commentary. YOU COULD NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP.

Bitter is as bitter as does/Fuck this cunt and his never-ending lap of honour/"And how we just made fun of those who had the guts to try and fail"
A lot of people have been getting all misty eyed over the apparent retirement of Les Murray (the soccer pundit, not the poet, and the fact that I'm not as spiteful of the latter as I am of the former these days is disturbing). As for myself, the first thing that's thrown me is that I thought that Laszlo was already more or less retired, because when was he on TV anyway? Was he on The World Game while it was still buried at 11pm on SBS2 on whatever day it was scheduled? Anyway, people have been lining up to offer their praises on a worthwhile career promoting the game, and more power to them and to him, as he did put in the hard yards over the journey. However, one bit of misplaced praise in this grizzled nostalgia fueled marathon has really pissed me off, and that's the recent line Les has been trying to spin about being a friend of the ethnic clubs, and 'why oh why are we so mean to them?'


And of all people to be asking the question in the most recent notable case, it had to be Mark Bosnich. The same Mark Bosnich who can't decide if we should  or shouldn't have ethnic clubs in the A-League. Now the reason of course that I get upset at Murray's commentary is because SBS - the supposed promoter of multiculturalism and of migrant communities - has in my most honest and considered opinion (as seen through red mists of rage and possibly incidentally coinciding with Ezequiel Trumper's thoughts on this matter) long forfeited any right to speak on behalf of Australia's ethnic communities. And this is not just because SBS has long exorcised non-English language programming off its prime time schedule on its primary station, and filled SBS2 with American sitcom repeats. It's because when it came time for SBS's soccer pundits - including Murray - to stand up and defend the migrant and ethnic soccer milieu from its detractors, they were found wanting.

For me, the most glaring example is of course the hatchet job Southern Cross A-League bid profile, a piece so vile that even one of the people behind our then rival bids for A-League expansion (Canberra United) could only shake his head at how bizarre it was. If that sounds like I've got a massive chip on my shoulder, so be it, but I don't think there's any need to apologise for holding that stance. I'm not going to begrudge anyone that wants to get a little misty eyed for Les' final bow, but as for me, this bloke sums up my feelings on the matter.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about
Those crazy Melbourne Keniggets fans. Some of them seem to like talking about South even more than I do. More of it, I say.

You can always sleep through work tomorrow
- OK, I'm done.
- You're done?
- Yeah, there's no point in dragging this crap out any longer. Do you want to do the thing?
- Sure. You're reading South of the Border, the South Melbourne Hellas blog that hates old people just because it can.

Steve From Broady reviews Sir Alex Ferguson's "My Autobiography"

Firstly, this is no joke I actually read a book. FREAKY, I know.

Anyway as an Arsenal fan I have despised Mr Ferguson for the past 10 years, but when he announced his shock retirement at the end of last season you did have to stand there and applaud the great man's achievements tracking all the way back to his days at Aberdeen where he won three Scottish leagues, four cups and a league cup. He also lead them to some European glory winning the UEFA Cup in the 1982-83 season.

It was with all that Mr Ferguson got a chance to manage Manchester United. It was a tough start to his time at United not winning silverware in his first few years. In the book Sir Alex goes into depth about how hard his first few years at the club were. But when the old first division was re-branded, this was when Sir Alex struck, winning the league in the first season in the Premier League.

It was at this time Sir Alex brought in heaps of big names to the club. In his book he had a crack at Roy Keane which was a bit of a surprise, and Keane hit back later saying the book is full of lies and that Ferguson was just trying to sell books. My favourite part of the rest of the book was when Ferguson ripped into our own Mark Bosnich, calling him the most unprofessional player he has ever seen.

At my young age it's hard to watch Bosnich now on Fox Sports and see the guy he was described as back then. There was a classic story of when the Man United team was on the bus home after a disappointing result, and Mark was ordering the whole shop over the phone at a Chinese Restaurant to be delivered to the bus stop.

In 1999 Man United played in the first ever club World Cup. Unlike South Melbourne, Sir Alex thought this tournament was a waste of time and that being forced to participate cost them an FA Cup. Overall this was a good book and since I don't plan on reading another book for a few years I will give it five stars.

Mark Bosnich gives us the thumbs up - but should we actually care?

A whole two years ago now, we had a jersey presentation night at Kinisi. Among the guests on the footballing panel was that was a part of the event, was one Mark Bosnich, of Socceroos, Aston Villa, Manchester United, Chelsea, cocaine, down and out followed by rebirth as the rehabilitated crazy thing on his head, stupid laugh and tell it like it is pundit on Fox Sports soccer coverage.

Back then, whatever my opinion was of what he was saying, at least it seemed like he actually believed in it, and wasn't trying to pander to our la la land hopes of getting back into the top-flight. Here's what I noted as the gist of what he said about that issue back then:

Unlike Les Murray in the past, Mark Bosnich at least had the courtesy not to humour our delusions of grandeur, by being unapologetic about his and/or the FoxSports team's stance that change was necessary in the game and that we should be relegated to the toxic waste dump of Australian football.

Though he did not use the phrase 'toxic waste dump of Australian football', his message was pretty damn clear: South, and clubs like South, had had their time in the sun, but everyone else had moved on, and it was time we did, too. No offense, you still have good tradition and that.

Two years on, and his opinion seems to have softened on the matter somewhat.



The person who posted this video has called it an endorsement of our A-League ambitions. I wouldn't go that far myself. But Bosnich goes further in this piece on the Fox Sports site.

How did he get from his previous line of thinking on the matter, to where he is now? Two years ago he would have politely knocked this on the head. But now when talking about our great tradition, he's not pushing us aside as yesterday's news, but claiming that we actually have something to offer.

To be honest, it's all a bit confusing. And we don't even have a game this weekend to take our minds off this rubbish.

A Glorious Night of TELLING IT LIKE IT IS! (or maybe just how some people see it but with the use of an authoratative voice so people are more likely to think you're being a realist and more knowledgable)

Or,


Reading Slaughterhouse 5 before rocking up to events celebrating the past and the future can alter perceptions in ways probably entirely intended by the author.


This entry has the usual wearying digressions.

I missed the 2010 jersey presentation with the least troublesome of my many medical emergencies of last year. I was in recovery mode after having my wisdom teeth taken out. Insert corny joke about that being less painful then such events; it'd have been true anyway, as unlike many dental themed horror stories, I was under general anesthetic for the entire procedure.

Anyway, the 2011 version was back at Kinisi for the first time since 2008. Almost the entire crew I would have normally attended and fraternised with in the past was absent. The reasons were many and varied - illness, hatred of Kinisi, disillusionment and being halfway through a nervous breakdown, the last of which I learned this week is not an actual medical term. Even I probably qualify for several of those categories, but I'd already committed! Blast!

I was with Gains and Hellas Johnny though, which made the evening more than tolerable. I'll say this about the seating arrangements. Not that I wish any sort of harm to those in the bliss of romantic entrapment, but being on a table filled with single people and one obviously very much in love couple makes one feel like a recalcitrant of some sort.

The player auction didn't seem to really take off. Indeed, the majority of the evening seemed muted, as if, after the recent celebrations of the past and the apparent end to life on the slow train to financial oblivion, there was no more need or energy to be fired up about the club anymore. That perhaps we'd found a niche we could survive in and that perhaps everyone was emotionally spent. Or maybe it's just a transition year. No home ground yet, the major battles won but the war not quite over. A 50 year old suddenly feeling the full force realisation of its best years behind it?

There was also the panel discussion. There was no Q&A segment, which was just as well I suppose, as I had been shunted into the back corner of the room facing away from the stage. They perhaps should have put me behind a curtain just to make sure I didn't do anything stupid - in the past I had an awful habit of rolling my eyes at almost anything, such was my teenage cynicism. I'm better at that these days, I have a little more self-control.

Too much talk about the EPL and pandering to the imagined loyalties of overseas allegiances forged in the heat of a suburban loungeroom. Koutoufides and Christou had some interesting anecdotes - did you know they were both Collingwood fans growing up? - but for the most part their presence on the panel was more of a fifth wheel. For all Ljubo's theatricality, there is an eventual one dimensional aspect which comes into his rhetoric. Still, it was interesting to hear about how while he was in Switzerland, he was getting half the wage of his time at the Glory.

Unlike Les Murray in the past, Mark Bosnich at least had the courtesy not to humour our delusions of grandeur by being unapologetic about his and/or the FoxSports team's stance that change was necessary in the game and that we should be relegated to the toxic waste dump of Australian football. Nor was he sorry that the players reaped the benefits more than anyone of the television money revolution, even while the fans were frozen ever more out of accessing the teams they love. His point had some merit - players, like other workers, had been exploited for generations by their employers. But has the ledger in some cases swung too far the other way? There wasn't any chance to ask that question, or any other.

After all the formalities were done, we stuck around for a bit catching up with people I see on a weekly basis anyway. Hellas Johnny, being a starfucker, got a few photos taken with some of the luminaries. Then we left. East Richmond station is one of my personal favourites. In the heart of the inner city and yet skipped over so often. So it goes.

In all seriousness, I probably should be banned from attending such functions, since I seem to always miss the point. It's about the hobnobbing and fundraising, not about quarter-literate cultural critiques and the fact that the chicken was dry again.